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Month: September 2018

We had another wonderful week in room 22! Your children are such a joy to teach every day. They are working hard and having fun!

Reading: We continued our whole class book study of, A Fish In A Tree. This week, we spent time analyzing the characters in the book so far and practiced proving our thinking with evidence from the text. During our book study, students are learning to listen to one another and either add on to a thought, agree, or politely disagree.

Writing: We are continuing to learn the steps to write an opinion piece. Last week, we mastered the skill of starting with a ‘rocking beginning’ to capture the reader’s attention. A few strategies to do that are onomatopoeia, repetition, facts and questions. This week, we moved on to the next two steps of writing an opinion piece – stating your opinion and providing reasons. Next week, we will discuss how to write a conclusion and practice using a graphic organizer to plan out each step of a final paper.

We practiced cursive lowercase letters ‘i’ and ‘t’.

Social Studies: We began our unit on Native Americans! Each child is assigned a tribe, located in a region of the United States. They are to research the tribe and find information about a number of different categories. This week they used both a website using a iPad as well as books that I checked out from the Seattle Public Library for them to research their tribe. They took notes on each category as they researched. We will continue to research for the next two weeks. Their final project will require each student to create a project to show what they have learned about their tribe (including each of the required categories). They may choose the type of project they complete – song, play, PowerPoint, poster, model, etc.

Math: This week students used placed value to compare numbers using the vocabulary and symbols for “greater than”, “less than” and “equal to”. Students also practiced writing numbers up to hundreds in standard form, expanded form and written form. Students also used number lines and place value to order numbers through thousands. Next week, we will begin rounding numbers up to hundreds, to the nearest ten.

Religion: This week we read an acrostic poem, “How Great Though Art” about seeing God’s greatness in the beauty of nature and creation. We discussed the poem and shared our thoughts and feelings that it evoked. Then, in groups, they re-created a verse and as a class we put each verse together to make the complete poem.

We had a terrific week in room 22. This week we began our in class academic routine as well as homework. Thank you for encouraging a growth mindset and empowering them to build responsible habits through their nightly homework. The first week of homework was a success! Thank you for your teamwork. This week our class worked hard through two MAP testing sessions, continued to adjust to a new academic schedule, met our 6th grade buddies and ran the Jog-A-Thon. They should be proud of themselves! They are such super stars!

Reading: We began a whole class book study on the book, A Fish In A Tree. We have been analyzing the characters, learning to support our thoughts and inferences with evidence from the text, learning how to actively participate in a collaborative book study and identify what we call “wonderful words” that pop out to us as we read.

Writing: We have began learning how to write an opinion piece. This week, we learned to start with what we call a “rockin’ beginning” to hook the reader from the firsts line. We learned strategies to accomplish this such as onomatopoeia, repetition, facts, questions and quotes. Then, we practiced using each of these strategies with different topics. Next week, we will continue our study of writing opinion pieces by practicing the next step of stating your opinion and providing reasons and conclusions.

Math: This week we focused on place value to the thousands place. Student’s focused on reading, writing and identifying place value of whole numbers through thousands. They practiced writing in standard form, expanded form, word form and showing with place value blocks. They worked on using place value to compare numbers using the vocabulary “greater than” “less than” and “equal to”.

Religion: We explored the Trinity with Sacred Art. We reviewed that God is three Divine Persons in one Diving Being; this is called the Trinity. We reviewed that The Son eternally proceeds from the Father and that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. We used an image of the painting Detail From Boulbon Altarpiece to inspire our thoughts and feelings about the Holy Trinity.

We had a terrific first week in 3rd grade. Your children are super stars! I am so happy I get to teach them this year.

This week we spent our time getting to know each other, the class routines and procedures and organizing our school supplies. We attended a welcome prayer service in the church on Wednesday with the rest of the school. We also attended a Jog-A-Thon assembly on Friday, where we all got very excited to participate in the annual fundraiser! You will find a packet in your child’s backpack from the Jog-A-Thon committee outlining this year’s event. The school also practiced a fire drill on Friday morning.

In class, one highlight was learning about extroverts and introverts and identifying with one or the other. We learned that as a classroom of learners, there are a number of different learning styles and environmental, social preferences that we must be aware of so that we can be respectful members of our classroom community. We are many parts, one body. Students worked to make their choice of visual representation of our own class data showing how many extroverts and introverts we have in our classroom. Some chose to represent the data using a bar graph, pie graph, cats and dogs, and many more creative ideas.

The class also spent time designing our class currency – which we decided will be called our “Class Coupon.” Each student designed a type of currency and the class voted on the one we will use this year. We will use our “Class Coupons” as a positive reward system and to “fine” students. Then, the class worked in pairs and groups to come up with ideas for items to be purchased using their coupons in our “Class Store”. I have attached a few photos of our week. You may ask your children to explain what’s happening in the photos!

Thank you for the birthday love today, I appreciate the kind words and thoughtful cards. Thank you.